While high intake of dietary fat and calcium is associated with an increased risk of clinically significant, advanced prostate cancer, it has no apparent impact on risk of early-stage disease, according to findings by Alan Kristal, Dr.P.H., and colleagues in Fred Hutchinson's Public Health Sciences Division.
Results of this population-based, case-control study appear today in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. The National Cancer Institute and Fred Hutchinson funded the research.
"Our findings clearly show decreased risk for late-stage disease in men with diets that are low in fat and moderate in calcium, perhaps because these diets slow progression of prostate cancer into more aggressive disease. For men diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer, this finding could be important because it suggests that moderating fat and calcium consumption may reduce the risk of cancer recurrence following treatment," said Kristal, a member of Fred Hutchinson's Cancer Prevention Research Program.
This study looked at the associations of total calorie, fat, calcium and vitamin D intake on prostate-cancer risk among 1,200 Seattle-area men ages 40 to 64; more than 60 percent of the participants were under age 60. Half of the men had been recently diagnosed with prostate cancer and the other half were healthy, randomly selected Puget Sound-area residents who served as a comparison group. The men were interviewed about their dietary habits three to five years prior to diagnosis (or an equivalent time frame among the control group). They also
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Contact: Kristen Lidke Woodward
kwoodwar@fhcrc.org
206-667-5095
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
6-Aug-2002